James L. Walker, Jr. serves as managing partner of Walker and Associates, LLP, a leading entertainment law firm in New England. The many facets of Mr. Walker’s practice include entertainment law, litigation, business law, intellectual property and corporate law. Whether a client is involved in books, recording contracts, or mergers and acquisitions, Walker has developed the legal expertise to close the deal.
Walker started his first business, Stillwater Productions, a concert promotion and artist management company, over 20 years ago. After gaining legal experience, he built up a small team and started Walker and Associates, LLP.
Walker's practice consists of the representation of corporations, on-air radio/TV talent, musicians, artists, athletes and real estate. Walker's client list over the years has included Academy Award winning actor/ recording artist Jamie Foxx, Director Bill Duke, BET star Dr. Bobby Jones, award winning writer/producer/arranger Donald Lawrence, Rob Lowe & Generations, WNBA star Ruthie Bolton-Holifield, Grammy Award Winner Hezekiah Walker, ESPN's Mark Gray, Grammy Award Winner Yolanda Adams, and the phenomenal international minister Dr. Jackie McCullough (among others). Recently, Walker handled the negotiations for journalist and scholar Dr. Barbara Reynolds to write the autobiography of Coretta Scott King.
Walker’s invaluable knowledge of the music industry was the ideal platform from which to launch his book venture. He penned the semi-Bible of Urban Music, This Business of Urban Music, an informative source of literature for anyone pursuing a career in music. This Business of Urban Music currently selling well throughout the country.
Walker also holds a law degree from Howard University and has taught entertainment law at the University Of Hartford’s Hart School of Music, and at the UCONN Law School. In the past, Walker has served as a panelist and workshop instructor at various schools including Yale Law School, Harvard Law School, UCONN, Boston College School of Law, Thurgood Marshall School of Law at TSU and George Washington University. He is also a guest commentator for Court TV's Prime Time Justice, CBS NEWS, BET’s Nightly News, and CNN.
Charles Clark: First off all, thank you so much for doing the interview. I really appreciate it, sir.
James Walker: My honor, my honor.
CC: I’m gonna start off with my favorite question… Who is James L. Walker?
JW: James L. Walker, Jr. is two people, probably. In the realm of the Gospel industry, I’m a very complex figure to some, probably. I’m an enigma because folks have heard my name, they know the litigation suits that I’ve filed, but they don’t really know me personally, which moves to the second guy who I believe I really am… Just a child of God… A god-fearing father, husband, brother, uncle, professor, teacher, author, musician and, of course, attorney and on-air legal analyst just trying to do the right thing, you know? I’m a guy who’s bent and driven on empowering Gospel artists by any means necessary.
CC: That is one of the most powerful statements I’ve heard. I want to know, how did you get on this particular path?
JW: It’s funny, I stumbled on it… I started my Gospel practice in ’95, getting Men of Standard freed from Malaco [Records]. If you talk to Lowell Pye or Isaac Carree, they’ll tell you, I went to Mississippi, scouted out Malaco, filed a federal lawsuit… The boys didn’t have much money to pay me, if any, but at that time, I believed them. They were all guys in their early or mid-20s and I just believed in them so I went and got them freed from Malaco. They were in a very slave-like, oppressive contract and from that standpoint on, I just became the guy that people would call whenever they felt they weren’t paid a royalty or they felt their recording contract was too rigid or just too one-sided. And I became the guy known to fight Malaco, Verity, Gospel Centric, Sony, BMG, Providence… I filed litigation against all of them with no apology because the Gospel industry, my friend, Mr. Clark, is a $3 billion industry, by anyone’s estimate. When you look at the publishing, promotion, t-shirts, TV shows – and just everything we do – the magazines, the websites… It’s a multi-billion dollar industry and there’s no reason why, like the NBA, we shouldn’t have multi-, multi-, multi-millionaires all across this industry. The gatekeepers have decided, we’re gonna run the record labels, we’re gonna control your publishing, we’re not gonna pay you for wild albums, we’re not gonna pay you for other things and we’re gonna all live well, while you guys scrap church-to-church, tour-to-tour, weekend-to-weekend and try to make a decent living… You follow me? And as a guy who’s owned several million-dollar properties, I don’t sit well at night knowing I’m living in a million-dollar home and 85-90% of the gospel artists that I represent, don’t have decent home or don’t have a decent savings; or don’t have something that they can say this is my nest egg and I’m ready to retire. You understand? That just really, really bothers me to the highest degree. And as Christians, I just don’t know how we can eat well and live well, knowing that our brothers and sisters are waiting on the next gig to come in, in order to pay their bills. If I’m Kirk Franklin, and I’m doing a tour every week, I’m doing a tour not just for myself, but I’m trying to figure out who’s struggling… Who can I put on this tour so that they can make a living? Who can I open the door for? You see Jay-Z and Kanye West opening the door for people; we have to get that mindset as Gospel artists that we throw the key back out so that we have five or six more millionaires. It’s not a hard thing to do. That’s the thing that people don’t realize. It’s not hard for me, as a mega, A-list artist to say I’m gonna do ten churches over the next four months and I’m gonna bring unknown Leon Timbo with me. (He’s an aspiring guitar player, Christian artist out of Atlanta.)
CC: No, not at all…
JW: Right… he’s a client of mine and just to use him off the top of my head [as an example] to say, as a top artist, it’s nothing for me to say I’m gonna go do five big, mega churches in the greater New York area and I’m gonna bring Lucinda Moore or I’m gonna bring LeJuene Thompson along and I’m gonna just let them turn it out and make sure every single interview I do, that artist is featured with me, just so that they can start making some decent bread. If I’m Donnie McClurkin and I give LeJuene Thompson three, five [or] six openings at a mega church, now she builds a clientele. Now they pay her a few thousand to come back. Now she sells 500 CDs. Now she’s got a $50,000 tour she can do every year… Got it? And that becomes her nest egg and it doesn’t take a lot of work from Donnie McClurkin or Kirk Franklin or Yolanda or whoever… The problem is we wanna be celebrities. And when you want to be [a] celebrity, you want to be the only one to win the Oscar. You wanna be the only one to win Best New Artist or Best Female Artist or Best Male Artist… That’s not quite Christology as I studied in Divinity school. You know what I’m saying?
CC: Most definitely…
JW: That’s not the Christian faith that my grandfather and grandmother taught me in Sunday school when I was a child. The Christology says that if I’m successful, I’m gonna bring Mr. Clark along and make him successful; I’m gonna bring Benita along and make her successful. I’ve already got my home. I’ve already got my retirement fund. I’ve already got certain things set up where I’m always gonna be okay. Now the question is can I bring other people along so they can be okay? Get this, Mr. Clark… It’s important that we develop them because then we can win too, for Christ! You follow me?
CC: Oh, yes sir! Yes…
JW: If I don’t develop more tours and I don’t secure… more producers and artists and songwriters, then I can only save five people as opposed to 50! Donnie McClurkin can’t do every mega church every Sunday morning! But if he creates 20 other “Donnie McClurkins”, they can run around the country saving a whole lot of people every Sunday morning.
CC: You said something that intrigues me a great deal. Would you say not create another 20 “Donnie McClurkins” but each artist is such an individual that if you could just lend a helping hand to one ?
JW: Yeah, right…Of course!
CC: You’ve mentioned several people, like LeJuene Thompson. I saw her recently on a clip and I had forgotten how powerful of a ministry – not just an artist but a minister of music – she is! I had forgotten because I don’t see her…
JW: Powerful… There you go! Powerful.
CC: As a matter of fact, the clip was from last year’s Stellar Awards, ah 2011 Stellar Awards, and I had forgotten how powerful of a [minister] of music that she is! Do you think that we’ve become so comfortable… that we are afraid of losing our positions that we don’t want to help someone else?
JW: Yes, yes. I think it’s two-fold. We’re scared of losing our positions but we’re also intoxicated with our positions. And that is the key part that I really want you to zoom in on. We’ve become intoxicated… Mary J. Blige is playing our album; or Lalah Hathaway is tweeting, saying that she likes our Gospel choir; or Puffy is enjoying the choir music of our group… We get so intoxicated with that that we forget it means nothing if we’re not winning in the Christ! That means nothing if they’re not getting saved! You know what I’m saying? It’s wonderful if Puffy is playing your music and loving Fred Hammond or loving Hezekiah Walker, but what does it really mean?
CC: So, do you think that we have lost the ministry of Gospel music?
JW: Yes, I do… You hit it right on the [head]. We have forgotten about the ministry of Gospel music and we’ve gotten more focused on the popularity of Gospel music, the celebrity of Gospel music; and we’ve totally forgot[ten] that it’s not about just the money and the industry, but it’s about the ministry. It’s not about the money and the industry – that will come, you will be accepted. If these artists see that you are really, really sold out, they’re gonna love your record even more! They play one of your songs or they hear Mary Mary’s Take the Shackles Off or It’s All About God… If they jam to that, when they meet you and you’re talking about I love you too, Jamie Foxx or I love you too, Diddy, why don’t you come over to the house and have Bible study with me… You see what I’m saying? Versus what typically happens – a well-known Gospel artist clocks out a well-known secular artist who’s in love with their music and then they go trying to hang with that person at that person’s house and take on the threads and the vibes and the clothing of that person versus inviting that person to their house and showing that person how we at the Walker Family house have a 300-person party every Christmas – off the hook, choirs on the stairways, DJ in the garage, Wii room upstairs, a jazz artist on the porch, 300 people deep – and there’s no alcohol; there’s no drugs; there’s no craziness. You understand? The secular artists come to my party. I had Freddy Jackson, for example. Major, iconic artist… He came to my Christmas party in 2009, sang You Are My lady to my wife – it was our wedding anniversary- and he was floored that here he was, sitting in a million-dollar, owned by a Black family, who’s primary client base was Gospel artists. He said it just blew his mind. And he said what blew his mind even more was that it wasn’t “an industry party”. It was just folks coming together, having a good time, believing the same thing and having clean, honest fun. So do you realize the witness that that made on Freddy’s life?
CC: Most definitely…
JW: I didn’t compromise. I didn’t have to do what the people in New York do, which is have people dancing off the ceiling and girls shaking this and shaking that. We do none of that! We gave everybody gift bags. We had a caterer serving food. We had six or seven different acts scattered all over the house. Then we had a little primetime show where Freddy sang his song and others sang their songs and then we had the featured artist of the night honored. But the example that I am trying to make, Mr. Clark, is that it shows secular artists that you can do it this way… This is how your momma and daddy raised you because many of them are straight out of the church, as we know.
CC: Yes…
JW: Many of them are straight out of the church and they are caught up in a music industry that is lost; that is trying to get an I.D.; that is trying to be something that it’s not. The gimmick of the music industry is that you pretend you’re something that you’re not. For example, they start you off by saying, okay, Clark, we’re gonna lie about your age. Okay, we’re not gonna tell that you’ve got a girlfriend because it’ll turn other girls off. So, we want you to be single. We want you to say you’re 21. We want you to be from the streets. We’re gonna say your mother left you when you were a child… So, it’s all built on fallacy and falseness so they can market records. And we are supposed to be the light in that darkness and we’re not! You’ve got Kirk Franklin. We’ve sold over 10-15 million Gospel records thanks to him. I don’t see us still selling out any stadiums. And I’m really talking about the Gospel side…
CC: Yes, and this leads me to my next question . . . Why is that? I was having this debate two weeks ago and part of that debate is that the Gospel music needed to become more mainstream, which irked my nerves to no prevail. Why is it that every time, to sell something, Gospel artists need to sound like secular when most secular artists want to sound like Gospel?
JW: I don’t totally agree with that. Look at William McDowell, I Give My Life Away; you look at Nobody Greater Than You… These songs don’t necessarily sound secular; they’re just pure, honest, great songs and cross all realms and all walks. Also look at Smokie Norful I Need You Now.
CC: Oh, I totally agree! Exactly.
JW: To answer your question, I don’t think it has to do with the music or anything like that. I think it has to do with [the fact that] we have not organized as a Gospel community. Let’s take the NBA and Country music as two examples. In the NBA, they got together 20/30 years ago… Michael Jordan, Larry Bird, Dr. J, Magic Johnson – they went to [the] owners and said this NBA thing has now exploded. NBA was losing money just like the Gospel industry in the 70s. The NBA was a thing where you didn’t have a lot of people making money in the 70s. As a matter of fact, drugs had infested the NBA in the 70s. Those four players got together with David Stern, figured out the marketing of it and brought that brand back to where it is today. And what I mean by that is, they figured out a way for everybody to make a lot of money, touch a lot of lives and be an iconic, global brand. The Gospel industry gatekeepers – and I’ll say this in your magazine with no apology – meaning Yolanda Adams, Donnie McClurkin, Kirk Franklin, Fred Hammond, Marvin Sapp, CeCe Winans, Bobby Jones and maybe Don Jackson from the Stellars… If those people came together and said “who is struggling [and] how are we gonna help them”, first of all… Secondly, how are we gonna preserve our music? Let’s talk to the DJs; let’s talk to the Gospel shows; do we need another Gospel awards show? If they got together and almost unionized – and I’m using that in a very informal manner – and said here’s what we’re gonna do to create more successful artists financially, here’s what we’re gonna do to make sure our concerts sell out… If you’re creating successful artists and your concerts are selling out, we really don’t care if the mainstream people buy our music or not. Now we’re selling out venues [and] artists are able to take care of themselves artists have health care benefits and retirement funds and everyone wins. But the gatekeepers are so intoxicated that they get invited to the Soul Train Awards or they get invited to the Grammy’s or they get invited to perform for Aretha Franklin in London that they forget they’re part of this whole extended family we call the Gospel industry. You understand? They totally forget that. They’re more caught up in “I’m in, you’re not… I’m getting the call from Puffy or I’m getting the call from Sony secular to do this big concert for Clive Davis and you’re not. Oh, well, I made it… You keep praying and God’s gonna bless you.” That’s the general spirit of the typical Gospel artist who “makes it” primetime. They have no sense of duty to “hey I need to go back and help LeJuene get out… I need to go back and help Nancy Jackson. I need to go back and help Leon Timbo… I need to go back and help Ricky Dillard… You know, at Kirk Franklin’s stature, he can go back and help pull up so many people to that level but it’s gotta be in him. It’s gotta be a part of his mission, his ministry. I don’t knock Kirk. I love Kirk to death. I saw him in concert. I’m a big, huge Kirk fan. But I just sometimes think we don’t realize the power we have and how to use it to glorify God, bring up other ministries and plant other seeds and tell the world “you think I’m bad, check this girl, LeJuene, out. You think I’m bad, check this other artist, Leon out. You think I’m bad, check out this other kid over here who’s coming up, Damita Haddon…” Let’s start trying to make more and more platinum artists so that our music can survive; so that our audience base can grow; and as our music survives and our music base grows, we’re saving more lives. At the end of the day, I’m about saving lives. And the only way you can save lives is by understanding you’ve gotta plant more churches. Each artist is like a church. You’ve gotta plant more churches to minister. If you’ve only got one guy who’s always getting invited to all the main shows or one lady who’s getting all the main show or tours, you’re not growing. You’re not growing at all. If the same four artists are on everything, you’re not growing as an industry and it needs to be addressed.
CC: How can we enlarge the marketing and branding of Gospel music?
JW: Yeah, that’s what I’m talking about really. The way we enlarge the marketing and branding Gospel music is to getting everyone to buy into even though you’re successful, the brand is hurting as a whole. You understand what I’m saying? Baseball can say A-Rod is a successful player… Derek Jeter is a successful player… But when they had the steroid scandal a few years ago, their brand was hurting as a whole, so the owners got together, the managers got together [and] the players got together and they said we gotta figure out a way to find some clean players to put back out here to re-invigorate our brand and kinda restart our legend. [S]o they got all these baseball players who were stars who are one-by-one bringing their brand up. Similarly, Gospel music – they’ve gotta get Donnie, Kirk, Yolanda, Fred, Marvin and others to kinda see themselves as elders and say “okay, what do I have to do to help the brand? What is my role?” And until you get them to buy into that, what you have going on right now is everybody sitting on their own separate island. We’ll see each other at the Stellar Awards… and we’ll all play the whole “family reunion” hugs and kisses, but then we all go back to our own island. And nobody is bringing everybody together to say here is the plan… Here’s what we’re gonna do… Summer 2012, Kirk’s gonna hit these ten churches and he’s gonna introduce her to LeJuene. I’m just using LeJuene because we both agree on her… but it could be anyone of that mid-level status or starter-level artists… There are like A-level artists, B-level artists and starter-level… When I say B-level, I mean artists that can’t sell out a venue; you know what I’m saying? The A-level guys can sell something out if they haven’t over-visited that market. If they are fresh to a market and they’ve got a hit album out, they can sell it out. Richard Smallwood, to me, while he’s a household name, I don’t know if some people would consider him an A-list artist, you know what I’m saying?
CC: Yes…
JW: And I love Richard. He’s my favorite Gospel artist of all time but I don’t know if someone said I need to book an A-list artist at this new venue in Georgia… I don’t know if Richard Smallwood could do it. And to me, the reason he can’t do it is because [the gatekeepers], those folks haven’t really bought into let’s brand Richard Smallwood. Let’s take him on a major, major tour with us into markets where the secular audiences don’t know Richard Smallwood by face and name… Because they know his music. Clearly, they sing his music at every church on Sunday morning but people don’t know his name. We did his new one, I’ll Trust in Him, everybody was rocking when they did the song but when I said afterwards, y’all know that was Richard Smallwood, everybody was like, really?! Because Gospel music doesn’t really have a video channel… It’s not like BET Video Soul where you’re gonna go there and see the video channel. So, the gatekeepers come together with Bobby Jones and others and we need a Gospel video thing. We also need to look at our interviewing process with radio stations. We should have some conscious effort of let’s get so and so on… If you call LeJuene right now and ask her when’s the last time KISS FM has interviewed you, she probably would say never… Donnie has a radio show on KISS every Sunday… Those people who are doing the shows, they should be the ones to say, I’m gonna make it my business to put on unknown, if you will, undiscovered acts and talents and get them out there so that these artists can get out there. And the common goal is that we wanna save lives. We only can save a lot more lives if we create a lot more ambassadors. Every artist is an ambassador for Christ. Like the United Nations, you have to create new ambassadors every month. If you don’t, we’ve got three or four ambassadors trying to cover 50 states and a world. We shouldn’t have the same three or four trying to do it all if they can step down and let others. It’s really on the gatekeepers. The gatekeepers have to show leadership; it’s not just gonna happen by osmosis. It doesn’t work that way. It’s gotta be like the Country music artists did. They got together. Country music has a primetime show on CBS every year, when they do their Country Music Awards… I don’t buy Country music, but I know about Randy. I know about Trisha Yearwood. I know about Garth Brooks. I know about Toby McGuire, I think his name is… I know about all these Country artists because they branded themselves so well in the mainstream. They formed the Country Music Association and they made a conscious effort to build their brand. They have a great awards show… They get good primetime coverage. We’re not like that and we’re not like that because we’re not having a dialogue on how do we create more “Kirk Franklins”… And when I say more “Kirk Franklins”, I don’t mean carbon copycats; I mean more artists who are selling platinum records. More artists who can come into Atlanta and pack three to four thousand people in the Fox Theater as he did on November 11th. There’s no conscious effort to make more ambassadors and I think my goal as a law firm has always been to help artists get to the level where they’re empowered and they’re becoming their own ambassador with or without the support of the industry.
CC: Right. Did all of this lead you to write the book, This Business of Urban Music?
JW: Yes, it did, Mr. Clark. I kept hearing about artists struggling and not understanding what a point was or how to calculate their royalties or anything of that nature, so I started working on the book in ’05 and finished a couple of years ago and I think we’ve sold out of our first printing – or close to it – because it’s so popular. So, yes, that’s why I wrote the book because I just felt that you can’t preach knowledge and empowerment if you’re not sharing it or writing it down for them to read. So I wrote the book and I took them to the Stellar Awards and I’d give them out. I’d sit on panels and give them out. I try to do everything in my power to make sure artists have the knowledge.
CC: What is the one thing that you think artists are lacking right now?
JW: The one thing I think artists are lacking right now…? Good representation. Because remember the Bible talks about whose counsel do you receive… In the Book of Psalms where it says, blessed is the man who walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, which is my favorite scripture in the Bible… My grandmother used to make me recite that whole first Psalm when I was a child… And it seems like now that she has passed away, I realize the reason I had to learn that. I look at that scripture and to me, the artist typically listens to the counsel of the ungodly. An artist takes off in this industry, gets a hit song or a hit album and they immediately let go – sometimes – their Christian advisors because so-and-so artist is using so-and-so as his manager or his lawyer or his accountant or his publisher. And you see this all the time. They get to a certain level and don’t use their Christian advisor… and they never give thought to is this [new] person saved? Does this person have the same values you have? Does this person know anything about the Gospel industry? Can they navigate the particular waters and peculiar waters of this Gospel industry? Like, for example, you hire them as your manager, but they don’t know how to talk to a Bishop or a Pastor and they get in a meeting and they’re cursing or they’re smoking or they’re bringing their girlfriend or something and they’re representing you as a Gospel artist. And they are not realizing in this Pentecostal church world that we live in, all of that stuff is a turnoff for you as the artist. So I look at those kinds of things… Is the artist getting good advice? If you’re getting good advice and good representation, most likely, you’re going to be able to sustain yourself long after your record is a hit. If you’re not getting good advice, you record comes out, it soars up the chart, you’re getting bad advice [and] 2-3 years later, you’re back home at your home church broke because your advisor didn’t tell you to do key strategic things to extend that 15 seconds of fame to 60 minutes of fame.
CC: That’s right…
JW: That’s what a good advisor does. …I think the biggest thing for a Gospel artist is having a good team and make sure that team can execute and really understand that you’re not supposed to agree with everyone on your team. I’m not on your team to be your yes-man. I’m on your team to be the man to tell you no sometimes. “This is not a good move. You do not need to be seen out there… acting like a secular groupie.” You’ve got to have good advisors to tell you to go home to your family. Divorce is crippling this Gospel industry. Divorce is killing us. Look at the major artists and look at their lives. I had a manager tell me people don’t realize how they’re out there is affecting how we sell tickets. We have a real crisis in this industry and it’s abroad from just artists – it’s pastors, too. We have a big issue in this industry with divorce and fidelity and infidelity. And I think that is something that is just quietly being swept under the rug. And that goes into who’s protecting these artists and who is their covering. When you see an artist getting out on the road and wilding out and sleeping with the choir members and all that stuff, that comes down to who’s got your covering, who’s your advisor and are you listening to your advisor. You can have a great advisor but if you’re not listening to them, that could be a highly explosive, bad situation for you as the artist. And at the end of the day, you end up losing everything. We’ve seen that happen now with a number of high-profile Gospel artists and their music starts to suffer. But divorce is a big factor affecting this Gospel industry and a lot of it could be avoided if we just had guidance from our advisors…
CC: Wow… Where do you see James L. Walker, Jr. in the next five years?
JW: In the next five years, I see myself moving away from being the guy having to file all the lawsuits and being the guy who is more the facilitator of resolutions.
CC: I love that…
JW: If an artist is struggling with a label, I wanna step in and facilitate a healthy resolution for everybody. If an artist doesn’t know how to go on tour and make money, stepping in and facilitating some relationships artists and some of the mega churches that I represent. I represent some of the biggest churches in this country. I can go across the country with mega churches that I advise so my role in five years from now is to become like these grey hairs in my beard, to be a little more in the background and facilitate things behind the scenes and trying to make sure our Gospel industry survives. Because you take Kirk Franklin out the mix and I’m worried because who do we have right now that is reaching the masses that he does as a male? We don’t really have a lot of people like him and Marvin Sapp. And that scares me… It really scares me that as an industry, we haven’t figured out how to create great records, great marketing, great branding so we have ten “Kirk Franklins” to call upon. You can call out ten artists on in R&B but we can’t do that on the Gospel side when more of us started out in Gospel than we did in R&B! It’s not for lack of talent; it’s more for lack of opening the door or lack of interest. When I say “interest”, I mean the interest in wanting to bring those young kids up and kinda give them the microphone and the platform. It’s getting the gatekeepers to give them the platform to get on and do their thing. We don’t give everybody a shot. We work so hard to get that spot ourselves, that we’re a little insecure about losing that spot. Instead of understanding that God got you to that spot to be a blessing and as you bless other people to stand in that spot with you, God is only gonna bless you ten-fold. God should really be the top and we should just be trying to facilitate other people getting there.
CC: How do you prioritize the many, many hats that you wear?
JW: [The] kids come first and everything else lines up after that. If you take care of your family everyday – kids, wife, family, mother – whatever is left, you just do what you can and when the sun goes down and you call it a wrap, you don’t lose any sleep because the kids had their moment that day. I used to try to do it all and I’d lose sleep if I didn’t get this contract done… but after 20 years in this industry, 17 years as a lawyer, I now realize you’re just not gonna get it all done every day. So you do what you can and make sure the kids’ needs are met, you can sleep at night because you have your wife’s blessing and God’s blessing and your family’s blessing that you did okay. That’s how you juggle it. You also juggle it by having good people. I have about 40 rentals and I have a team of five people that handle the rentals. I represent hundreds of clients and I have a team of 5-10 people that help me with the clients. I do my work with CNN and other networks as a legal analyst from time to time; I have two or three people who will coordinate the media stuff when I’m doing that. So you learn how to delegate is what I’m saying. You’ve gotta learn how to delegate and let go. Remember this, Mr. Clark, because you publish a great, great magazine… You may need people who are only 70% of you. That’s okay. You can add the other 30%. You may need people who are only 80%. You’re not going to meet anyone who’s 100% as driven as you, probably. Maybe one or two but not many as you’re hiring staff. But if you need someone who’s got 80 or 90, go with it and you fill in the 10 or 20. You follow?
CC: Yes, sir.
JW: Once I learned that, learned how to manage people better. You start, as they say in church, meeting people where they are and you find you’ll start accomplishing a lot more and you find yourself a lot less disappointed because you go in knowing [for example] this writer is 80% but that’s okay because she’s still a good writer… She’s still a good person. You work with them. So to answer your question, I have to make sure I have good people.
CC: What is the one lesson you want for your children as they walk out the door for their first year of college?
JW: Remember who you are. My daughter’s a freshman at a major college in the D.C. area. I said to her, remember who you are, in August. Around October, we had to fly my wife down to visit her in college because she had forgotten who she was. My wife flew down and got her back on track. It’s the same for the artists. Just remember who you are. It’s not meant for you to take every call. I came out when Kirk came to Atlanta. I’m so proud of him for doing his recent tour himself. That’s where we should be going as an industry. He didn’t hire a promoter. He and his team put together his whole tour. That’s the way we should be doing things in this Gospel industry. I really wanna big-up to what Kirk did on that tour. Now I don’t know if he lost his shirt or not, but he knows how to do it now and now he should teach Yolanda how to do it… And he should teach Marvin Sapp how to do it… He should teach Fred Hammond how to do it and so on and so on… Because once we can create our own tours without a promoter, we really control a bigger piece of the pie and we can kinda go out whenever we want because now we have the relationships at radio, TV, print, websites to make the tour a success because we did it in every market. And that’s what Kirk did. And I’ll say it here first in your magazine… My office is ready and willing to buy a date on his tour just as a sponsor because we believe in what he’s trying to do. That’s empowerment 101 right there.
CC: Sir, I’m done. I think I’ve taken up more time than you allotted…
JW: No, I hope I answered every question. I don’t have any prepared words; I just speak from the heart.
CC: Thank you.
James L. Walker, Jr., is a leading entertainment lawyer in the Country. He is a Professor, Legal Analyst, Businessman and Author of "This Business of Urban Music". He can be emailed at jwalkerbook@yahoo.com or on twitter @jameslwalkeresq. To learn more about him visit www.walkerandassoc.com
 |
FREE DOWNLOAD  |
